Misstatement Direction, Litigation Risk, and Planned Audit Investment
实验发现，当潜在错报高估业绩时，审计师对诉讼风险的评估和计划审计投入更高，尤其在客户行业诉讼风险高时更明显，可能导致财务报表更多出现无意重大低估错报。
This study reports the results of an experiment showing that auditor assessments of litigation risk and planned audit investments are higher when potential errors overstate financial performance than when those errors understate performance. This result is much stronger in the presence of high levels of litigation risk in the client’s industry. These results suggest that in industries where litigation risk is high audited financial statements may contain more unintentional material understatement errors than overstatement errors. Thus, litigation risk—through its effect on auditors—may encourage financial statements that understate firm performance